The following extract is taken from an
encyclopaedia and highlights the main areas of activity associated with peace and conflict research and provides a brief outline about the creation and development of this particular field of
research. We have put together another extract on a separate page which highlights a
deficit in this approach, namely the way in which this field of research has neglected the search for peace-promoting
strategies.
I.
"Scientific interest in war and peace is as old as science
itself. Yet for all this, it wasn't until the 1950s that a branch of science dedicated entirely to researching
peace, conflict and the conditions needed for peace was established.
A number of isolated attempts at establishing peace as a science were undertaken during the 19th century in connection with the peace
movement. But it wasn't until the horrors associated with the mechanical mass extermination of millions during the First World War that institutions for international relations were set up in the UK and USA alongside the League of Nations and International Court of Justice with the task of carrying out research into international conflicts and war, revolution and civil war and the conditions necessary to secure lasting world
peace. Just shortly after 1920, however, little was left of the commitment to put war and peace at the
center of research into international relations. It wasn't long before this new field of science was being used for legitimating foreign policy and
in the interest of power and the military.
The Second World War shook the political and moral foundations of the state system to its foundations and this along with the politically
organized mass extermination of people by Stalinism and Fascism, and especially the prospect of nuclear mass destruction all conspired to establish research into peace at the end of the 1950s as a reaction to the predominant ideology of the Cold War. The first research
centers were set up in a handful of universities and research institutes in
Canada, the US and Norway. At the same time poleloogy (science of war and
conflict) which encompassed only a few people in France and Holland concentrated on systematic research into war and
conflict.
From now on the purpose of research into peace was no longer the
monitoring, containment and restriction of war, but rather the abolition of war as a way of doing business between between societies and
states. To this end, research into peace took up the idea of achieving a utopia of world
peace, which was a central theme of the liberal and republican-democratic middle-class movements at the end of the 18th and first half of the 19th century and which was picked up and spread in particular by the
labor movement.
The school of thought was rather focused on monitoring and controlling war and was reflected especially in the USA alongside peace research within conflict research in the (Journal of Conflict Resolution 1957), before both of these fields of research united during the 1960s to form peace and conflict
research.
II. As part of the easing of international tension in 1964 it became possible to set up the International Peace Research Association in Groningen. The Journal of Peace Research was also founded in 1964 and played a large role in expanding the scope of international peace
research. With the setting up of regional organizations in Latin American and Asia in the late 70s, the scope of peace research now extended far beyond North America, Western Europe and Japan and, in
principle, was able to achieve international presence, with the assistance of UNESCO as a
negotiator.
The establishment and promotion of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute represented a real breakthrough for peace
research. This institute was founded in 1966 to mark the 150th anniversary of Swedish neutrality with the aim of developing a scientific basis for Swedish and international disarmament diplomacy at the UNO in
Geneva. Published by SIPRI, the Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmament contained data and analysis on the development of defense spending and weapons systems and served in
drawing international attention to the field of peace research.
The easing of tensions and less public concern about the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the development problems in the Third World all conspired to focus attention onto the North vs. South
problems. This resulted in a substantial expansion of the peace research paradigm beyond the focus on armament
dynamics, systems of deterrent, armament control and disarmament, which had previously been its primary
concern.
Associated with the development, or rather, picking back up on the concepts of asymmetric
conflict, interest conflict and manifest and latent conflicts, the paradigm expansion found particular expression in the concept of structural aggression (Galtung 1969), which was quickly picked up in the liberal and socialist thinking parts of Western society, which started to address the problem of reforming the international and civil society system.
Given the diffuse nature of structural
aggression, the scope of peace research expanded dramatically. This also meant,
however, that this field was subjected to almost unlimited growth and to proportions fitting a universal
science. It couldn't cope. Nonetheless, during the 70s this expansive development was often seen as
liberating, since the old approaches no longer seemed appropriate for tackling modern problems such as the international development of human society, their state systems and their
environment.
Research into peace had an effect on political science, psychology
(aggression research), theology, education and geography. It also influenced
physics, biology, information science, philosophy, historical science, law and military science
(strategic studies); it had less of an impact on sociology - apparently because of its traditional tendency to concentrate on the concept of society within the bounds of the nation
state.
Ever since the late 1970s as the Cold War and the possibility of nuclear war once again moved into the foreground of the
industrialized nations, peace research turned its mind back to its core task, namely that of researching the conditions needed for preventing war, the causes of war, conflict information and armament
dynamic, without losing sight of structural aggression (especially the structural aggression that leads to death and war),
which, for most people, remains far more threatening than conventional warfare.
[Egbert Jahn: Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, in: Dieter Nohlen (Hrsg.): Pipers Wörterbuch zur Politik, München 1989, p. 256-258]
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